An organization called the Afghanistan Study Group which would seem to be driven largely by former US State Department Field officer Mathew Hoh has produced a new report outlining what they consider to be an alternative strategy for the US in Afghanistan. 

Having now read the report, although I agree with much of it, I consider it to be naive in the extreme. As I read this report, I see the imprint of an angry young man who only spent five tense months at a US military base.

In discussions of what is the right politics I find great consolation in this speech by a former Prime Minister of Australia. It talks of a fair go for all while noting that people at the upper and lower ends of the social spectrum are either able to look out for them self or have other do it for them. I am perhaps not so much in favor of the latter but for the rest of the community, I see this is very much the ideal and for that reason I am posting here for you to read.

Traditionally, the construction of rural roads in low income countries has been an occupation that suits men as the major source of labor and particularly so in societies where it is culturally insensitive for men and women to co-mingle.

But while the objective is to create an environment where the work is sustainable, the nature of road work employ is more often than not, a transient occupation that depends on the activity budgeted for a particular region.There is the option to creating durable roads however in that much seasonal work is to be found in repairing roads that have degraded due to seasonal and traffic conditions. Any development project needs to be cognizant of this seasonal source of income as well. 

There are myriad occupations that are suitable for the employ of women in occupations that are associated with the construction of roads that don’t necessarily require them to move far from their normal place of residence. In this article I would like to address some of the options that could be and perhaps should be considered in any road construction program in order to offer women an equal opportunity to generate an income.     

The reporting from Afghanistan is at times depressing in its lack of depth to even more depressing when it comes as a promotional material for the US military campaign. It was somewhat refreshing to see two major reporting anomalies of late that present a more honest picture of what goes on within the campaign. The first being the Rolling Stone report that saw General McCrystal speak frankly for which he was summarily sacked and the second has been the revelations and accounts that arise from the WikiLeaks.

The picture we regularly receive from embedded reporters however is different to the picture that I have seen when not in the company of a military platoon or from the confines of a military base.  Certainly I have been to a few bases in Kabul, others in Lashkar Gar, at the Kandahar airbase, again in the Jalalabad airbase and in Tirin Kot and felt the vast distance that exists between the two civilizations. Afghanistan through a military eye is not Afghanistan nor does one gained from being on patrol offer a realistic perspective of the life and aspirations of ordinary Afghans.

I read a description of US soldiers once that seemed to be apt. They are like spacemen wandering around the countryside in space vehicles treating the citizens like they are disease ridden, lying, cheating vermin.  No doubt, many in the military carry that view particularly those that travel to the front lines and maintain a healthy suspicion of everyone they encounter. They often don’t know who their enemy is nor are they about to make any distinction for the sake of clarity.

In the past there has been and there still is a lot of discussion concerning the foreign aid provided by developed countries to developing countries. As recent as June this year, the US congress put a halt to the annual budget allocation for international aid to Afghanistan, ostensibly in light of the accusations that a large part of the funds were being misappropriated as a consequence of Afghan corruption.

Underlying this incident however is the need for developed countries year in and year out, to provide a pool of funds to support the most disadvantaged in the developing countries yet with no discernable shift in the circumstance of these countries or the overall impact of the foreign aid in terms of tangible improvement.

In 2005 James Wolfensohn, recently retired president of the World bank pointed out that the world spends 1000 billion a year on defense and one twentieth of that, around fifty billion a year on development.

His argument was to spend less on defense and more on development but what of the fifty billion already spent each year?

In December 2003, at the behest of the Bonn agreement the UN in Afghanistan convened a Loya Jirga to decide the content of the new Afghan constitution.  The form and function of the constitution was faulty from the start. An initial draft was dismissed and a second committee of thirty-five  Karzai appointees drafted a new document that was released for public review only a matter of weeks before it was to be decided.

The Loya Jirga was no better. 500 appointed delegates from around Afghanistan many failing to have their concerns and inputs heard were to decide the content of the new draft constitution in a few weeks while issues that seemed intractable were being pushed through behind the scenes by the then US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. At one stage according to a UN official at the Jirga, the US who was the main sponsor was going to cancel the Jirga if the issues were not considered in their preferred favor within the time frame they had decided.